Clark Quinn (blog, website, Twitter) recently cited some of my thinking about instructional objectives in the instructional technology forum of AECT (ITFORUM). I wrote a long email to Clark in response, thanking him, and going into more detail. I am reprising my response to Clark here:

In a recent post to this list, Clark Quinn rightly notes that objectives for learners and objectives for instructional designers need not be identical. Indeed, as both Clark and I have previously noted, the probably shouldn’t be identical.

Here’s the thinking: Objectives are designed to guide behavior. So, how can it be that identically-worded objectives can adequately guide the behavior of two disparate groups of individuals (learners and instructional designers)? It just doesn’t make any sense!!

And indeed, Hamilton (1985) found that presenting learners with learning objectives in the way Mager suggested, PRODUCES NO BENEFITS AND MAY BE HARMFUL. Here’s what Hamilton wrote:

“[An instructional] objective that generally identifies the information to be learned in the text will produce robust effects. Including other information (per Mager’s, 1962, definition) will not significantly help and it may hinder the effects of the objectives”

(Hamilton, 1985, p. 78).

Objectives are not only designed to change behavior for a particular set of individuals, but they are also designed with particular purposes in mind—or they should be.

So, when we talk of instructional objectives, we also need to think about what purpose we have for them.

The quote above from Hamilton is focused on how well learning objectives focus the attention of learners. Interestingly, this is the only area in which extensive research has been done on learning objectives. You might be surprised to know that learning objectives help learners focus on the information targeted by learning objectives, but actually diminish their attention on information in the learning materials not targeted by learning objectives. For example, in two experiments using specific objectives, Rothkopf and Billington (1979) found that when focusing objectives were provided to learners, performance on material related to the objectives improved by 49% and 47% over situations when focusing objectives were not used. However, the material not related to the learning objectives was learned 39% and 33% WORSE than it would have been if no learning objectives were used!

These types of instructional objectives—presented to learners prior to subsequent learning—I call “focusing objectives” because they are designed for the purpose of focusing learner attention on critical learning material. As the Hamilton (1985) review pointed out, it does NOT help to add Mager’s criterion information to focusing objectives, because it doesn’t help learners focus on the critical material.

NOW, here’s an important point (I say to focus your attention): We don’t necessarily need to use focusing objectives with learners if we have other means to focus their attention!! We can use a relevant, gripping story. We can do a shout-out (example, “Here’s an important point…”). We can have them attempt to answer a relevant scenario-based question and struggle with it. Etcetera.

Here’s another important point: Focusing objectives are only one type of objective we might want to utilize. I have a whole list, and I’m sure you can think of more of them.

Instructional Objectives for Learners:

Table-of-Contents Objectives
To give learners a big picture sense of what will be taught.

Performance Objectives
To let learners know what performance will be expected of them.

Motivation Objective
To ensure learners know why they might be motivated to engage the learning or application of the learning.

Focusing Objective
To guide learner attention to the most critical information in the learning material.

Instructional Objectives for Developers:

Instructional-Design Objective
To guide developers toward the ultimate goal of the learning intervention.

Evaluation Objective
To guide developers (and other stakeholders) to the ultimate measurable outcomes that the learning intervention will be measured by.

Situation Objectives
To guide developers to the situations that learners must be prepared for.

OrganizationObjectiveTo guide developers to the organizational effects targeted by the instruction.

Questions:

So, here’s some questions for you:

Is it okay to use the word understand in an “instructional-design objective”?

How about in a “focusing objective”?

Answer: It’s okay to use the word understand in a focusing objective—because it does not hurt the learner in setting them up to focus attention on critical concepts. But it is NOT okay to use the word understand in an instructional-design objective—because the word “understand” doesn’t have enough specificity to guide instructional design.

My point in asking these questions is to show that over-simplistic notions about instructional objectives are likely to be harmful to your instructional designs.

As usual, the research helps us see things we wouldn’t otherwise have seen.

I urge you to support Elliott Masie's war on frivolous LMS Trademarks. Here's what Elliott wrote in his newsletter:

Help! Defend Learning Field
from Patent Suit! The learning "patent trolls" are at it again. There
is a company called IPLearn that has unfortunately successfully sued over a
dozen learning management system – claiming they have invented many of the core
elements of technology delivered learning. Sure, they wrote several
clever patents that claim to have created much of the field – and, with an
understaffed patent office, it was approved – though there were many prior
learning and technology implementations. And, their strategy, which has
worked, is to sue a company – get the discovery and legal costs up and up, and
finally settle for a fee and stock shares. All, without having invented,
produced or created anything – other than a few patent apps.

I have worked, without fee,
against their efforts several times and now they are at it again. They
have brought suits against several major LMS companies – and I am asking
Learning TRENDS readers to help gather any manuals, documents or other
experiences you have had with these earlier corporate learning systems:

The lawyers defending against
the IPLearn suit would love to see any samples of anything that describes the
operation or public availability of these systems. For example:
user manuals, help files, demonstration videos, brochures, press releases, and
actual program disks/CDs.

If you can help, would you send
a note to my office at emasie@masie.com
and we will contact you back. Many thanks!

While I'm not a trademark expert, and I support people and organizations who truly do create something new and unique, trademarks that aren't deserving hurt our industry and our learners.